The further Mai entered into the Deadzone, the worse it got. Lights flickered on and off if they worked at all. Ceilings and walls sagged and bulged, with liquids either dripping or dribbling from holes. Rusted walkways made using them treacherous and Mai was forced to walk in the stream of effluent more than she would have liked.

And there was that damned draft, just at the edge of being able to sense it. It was as if it was almost metaphorical. On top of that, she was sure that the drips of the liquid were louder than seemed natural, and there was some sort of humming tone right at the very end of the audible register which set her heart pounding, stomach twisting and making sweat pour from every pore in her body.

It’s as if I’ve been INTIMIDATED without having the damned buffer! At this rate, a mouse could say boo and I’d run screaming for the exit.

Why on earth people would choose to enter such a place when they could still scavenge and hunt in other, better maintained parts of the sewers she had no idea. She also realised that she had no idea whether the Deadzone was on this, or spread across the sewers throughout the miles.

Opening up her retinal map, she tried to see if any of the other sewers she’d been in on other levels had been affected. Usually Sewer Companies only worked the sewers on their levels, but there would be exchanges of staff in order to keep up on the latest techniques as well as to build on the shared bond of being indentured and up to their necks in shit.

Manipulating the map, she spun it around and drilled down through the levels she had been in. It was as if the sewers had a tumour. The deadzone was at least three miles deep, and a good ten miles wide. Absolutely huge. She saw with a pang of regret that Andries’ place of death had been absorbed.

Closing the map, she shook off any maudlin feelings and set off again. She had only gone a few paces when her passive SPOT HIDDEN led to her a pile of rubble. A boot, ragged, and with what looked like blood on one side. Moving towards it, she picked it up, and turned it over.

PROPERTY OF FAT JOHN was clearly written in somewhat childish handwriting. Despite the fact that he could make clothing at will from either nanites or templates, Fat John always made it clear to all and sundry that he owned it.

“Gods I hope this doesn’t mean the damned mogwai ate him and spat out the boot,” she whispered, placing the boot the right way up on the pile of rubble. Looking around she could see no other sign of clothing, nor of human remains. The guideline for his rescue continued to pulse and she chided herself for not considering that fact. “Of course he’s alive. If he wasn’t, I’d have failed the damned rescue mission.”

Pressing on, she found the sewer growing more and more oppressive with each step. An animalistic urge to snarl and growl at the sewer surrounding her built up until she felt she was going to burst.

“Fucking place is alive,” she muttered, glad to hear her own voice as it went some way to drowning out the ambient sounds of the sewer tunnels.

Another boot appeared after a few more minutes of walking, closely followed by some shreds of hazmat suit. Neither of the missions she had given an exact location as to where she needed to go, both guidelines ending at a circle many hundreds of paces in diameter. All she knew was that she had roughly one hundred paces until she reached the quest boundaries. After that, only the gods knew.

Or the fucking demons, she thought as she glanced at the shadows. The lighting in this stretch of sewer had almost totally failed, and she’d taken to moving between the patches of light in order to preserve her night vision. And I don’t want to let any woman-eating creature get their teeth into me.

There was the clatter of stone against stone followed by a dull splash slightly up ahead of her. Squinting in the poor light, she froze mid-stride as she tried to work out what might have caused it.

A groan, human, pained, drifted down from up ahead and she bit her lip to stop from calling out to her friend.

It’s strange how you can tell someone’s voice even if they don’t speak. It was definitely Fat John, and from the sound of his voice he was right on the edge of the quest area. Her other quest, that of killing the creatures causing so much trouble, overlapped so that they slightly resembled a Venn diagram. Who’d have thought I’d have remembered something like that from school.

Moving forward, she opened up her menu and quickly formed the grenade launcher. Whilst Fat John had been taken by Mogwai, there was nothing to say that he was still with them and hadn’t been taken by Ushi-oni, or just plain Oni.

BIO-MASS 40%

Chittering, like the sound a cat makes when it sees its prey, sounded off just a few paces in a pool of darkness. Twitching, Mai very nearly loosed off a grenade. Sweat beaded on her forehead and she licked her lips as her breathing sped up.

More chittering, this time to her one o’clock. Mai formed a shield out of her spare hand, holding it before her.

How the Hells I’m going to defeat anything that comes at me from close range I don’t know, she thought, cursing herself for not thinking that part through. She’d been working off the thought that she could engage the enemy from a distance, then close to kill any that remained.

Shield raised, she moved slowly, activating her STEALTH and LARCENY skills in order to minimise any sound. They also allowed her to map the best way to move through the patches of light and darkness, limiting her exposure to whatever might be lurking.

Fat John groaned again, and there was an outbreak of chittering from roughly fifty paces ahead. Trying to keep her breathing as slow and quiet as possible, a Herculean task considering the adrenalin flowing through her body, Mai advanced, following the route indicators her skills gave her.

“Fuck off!” roared Fat John, startling her so much she was sure she let out a squeak of surprise. Fortunately, it appeared to have been drowned out by the sudden increase in chittering.

Mai blink-clicked on her comms channel. Since she and Fat John had worked alongside each other, he was in her contacts list.

“John, it’s Mai. I’m here to get you. What am I up against?”

“Mai?” he gasped over the comms channel, voice so full of hope that it brought tears to her eyes. “I’m hanging from the ceiling. Above a nest of the damned things.”

“Oni?” She closed her eyes, mouthing a prayer to the Seven Martyrs that there were only baby Ushi-Onis.

“No, mogwai. I got snatched by a damned Brood Mother. Her hatchlings are beneath me. There’s about four of them.”

“Where’s the damned Brood Mother?” she froze as another stone tumbled down somewhere off to her left. It was then she realised that she’d been so focused on what was happening in front of her that she hadn’t noticed she’d entered a chamber.

“She’s to the East,” John said. Precisely where the last set of falling stones had come from. Not that a few falling stones meant anything in a place like this. The whole place felt as though it could come crashing down on her at any moment.

“Any idea how far away?”

“No, bitch comes and goes regularly. She keeps dropping bones around the nest. No idea what she’s doing.”

Mai had been creeping forward the whole time they were talking, sub-vocalising in order to prevent the hatchling mogwais from hearing her. She could just about see them now. And they were even more hideous than grown mogwai.

For starters, their skin was a pale puss-green, shining from the ooze that they exuded. None of them resembled the other, and had any number of legs ranging from four to at least eight. Just trying to count them made her feel queasy.

They were all up to a pace long, large even for the average mogwai she would have encountered before the Deadzone came into being. Now she just had to assume that they were of average size. She shuddered at the thought of them being fully grown.

“Let me know when you hear the Brood Mother coming,” she commed, edging forward once more. The hatchlings’ attention was currently purely focussed on Fat John, who slowly spun as he hung from the ceiling. Fortunately, he was head up, which would make cutting him free easier from the whole ‘don’t drop your friend on his head’ point of view.

Shifting around the nest, she kept a close eye on her skills, making sure that they didn’t go passive before she’d finished planning her attack.

No way I can just lob a grenade into the centre of the nest. All of those bones would shatter, the shards killing me, and John would be crisped by the explosion.

There was nothing for it, she was going to have to close and kill them as silently as possible. And that meant no grenades.